Idiophone
by BUNNI-extra-MSG
Summary: Violins chase Draco, and Harry inexplicably goes missing.
1. Idiophone: Part I

**Disclaimer: **These are mad tense issues in mad, mad times. There's tense... and then there's grammar, so there's a little bit of both worlds. All the characters are owned by the Lord of Human Entertainment, WB, or whoever owns the souls of Harry Potter characters these days. Draco's angst is owned by none other than himself. Written while listening to classical music--

VOCAB: IDIOPHONE – an instrument that produces a sound when hit; also shelters the word "idiot"

**IDIOPHONE, PART I**

By BUNNIEXTRAMSG

Merlin, there are violins playing in the background. _Violins_. And not just any old one bow squawking at strings, but a full _orchestra_ of them warbling about, and he can almost hear the smoke sizzling off the bows on this particular riff, and he stops dead in the crowded hallway, it is so near he can almost grab the sound in his hands, if only it would still for a second — and so he suddenly spins around to catch the shadow of an note and —

he stumbles backwards, his back smacking through two people and against the stone wall. Books and roll of parchments slide from his arms and floundering, he follows. The nasty gremlin that took three nights to capture for Potions jumps off the page of a parchment and into thin air.

"Bloody _shit_," he rages from his seat on the floor. A violin hits a high note, and the rest follow suit. He squints up at this nasty turn of events, and unsurprisingly, it sports a disheveled mop of brown hair and crooked glasses. Still doesn't own a comb, he observes in disgust.

"Good going, Malfoy," Potter says, shaking his head, and bending down to pick up the books. "Now we're both late for Potions."

"What deity crowned you the bloody Samaritan, Potter?" Draco snaps, smarting at his clumsiness. In one motion, he jumps up, scoops up his belongings, and runs off to class. Potter is left properly agape behind, his mouth shaped in a "what?" The violins haven't stopped, and hell, Snape is going to have his head, that's what.

Draco bursts in, panting, and, parchments threatening to trickle out of his arms, dives into his seat. Crabbe nudges him: "You're late" and makes an unnecessary nod towards Snape's stony face.

"Had to save a maiden in distress, sir," Draco said. He added matter-of-factly, "Hufflepuff, sir. You know how it is. We've arranged for tea next Sunday."

"Most admirable, Malfoy, although I'd prefer you save your chivalrous exploits after Potions," Snape drawls. The class titters. Draco glares at Ron who, across the room, doesn't have the rearing to muffle his annoying chuffs; and then glances at the empty seat next to him.

Snape drums his fingers on the stand, then riffles through a large purple gilded book. "Class, take out your homework. I want to see your paper gremlins."

When Draco informs Snape that he accidentally used the parchment to write out the Hufflepuff lady's credentials, he is given an extension of another day — "this is the last allowance I'll make for your 'chivalry,' Malfoy" — which is perfectly fine with him.

Towards the end of class, Draco slumps in his seat. His potion fouled, when, after a period of blessed silence, a murmur of drums unexpectedly jolted his hand in the middle of adding milkweed root. It ends all over his new robe, the one with the fancy gold D.M embroidered on the collar.

When Snape turns his back to berate Longbottom for disintegrating half of his table, Pansy finishes the rest of the potion for him.

Potter never shows up.


	2. Idiophone: Part II

**IDIOPHONE, PART II**

By BUNNIEXTRAMSG

The ceiling of the Great Hall is indigo today, laced with stars. A large moon is pinned like a yellow brooch to the hefty clouds, looking too large to be real. Last month someone found a spell to make a flock of crows spray back and forth across the sky. It was a good for a lark, but boring; the teachers took no notice, despite the students' pointing and whispering. If anything, it showed just what a useless lot they were. Then a Ravenclaw first-year ventured outside and discovered crow skulls littering the ground. The spell was taken off to the beat of her screaming.

"I still hear Mandy whimper all the way from my room. Not the best accompaniment, I can tell you," Millicent Bulstrode scoffs at lunch, ringing her bowl with a metal spoon. "Nightmares, she says. If you ask me, the Ravenclaws are a bunch of soppy losers."

"Soppy _bookish _losers," Malcom Baddock agrees, mouth full of turkey. He's Millicent's new arm-candy, and a bit of an oxymoron in the couple with his relatively pleasant face to Millicent's rat one — the rumor is that either he was coerced or cursed.

"You can use crow skulls for _loads_ of spells," Millicent says.

Down the table, someone tells her to shut up already about the ruddy crows, and, face poisonous, Millicent makes to get out of her seat.

Across from the bustle, Draco listlessly jabs at his plate, pushes the peas around. He takes his fork and meditatively squishes the green against the off-white porcelain.

Something is niggling at him. No, it isn't just the violins, which have since started a coalition with drum patters; but something as equally pervasive, although silent.

About the first problem, he swears to himself he is going to tell Snape. But every time he makes his way to his Potion Masters' office, he finds himself five feet short of entering.

"What is it now, Malfoy?" he can imagine Snape looking down his hooky nose to ask.

"Sir, I've got a bit of problem with my ears. Fancy you could ring them about a bit? I've got to get rid of the violins. And the drums, you see." Oh yeah, he can see, alright: Snape staring at him, appalled.

In his mind's eye, Draco can sense his dignity physically taking a blow, as Snape takes a St. Mungo's application out of his robe and, with a fatherly air, folds Draco's hand around the creased paper. "Take this. Years later, you will remember me in faithful service of the Malfoys, always ready with infinite copies to supply your ancient line with."

NO. NO. NO. The seed of a tantrum erupts in his throat. Despair tastes like burnt turkey. And rising vomit. Slowly, methodically, Draco plants his head on his plate, taking no note of the mashed potatoes as it flattens his eyebrows.

Next to him, Pansy grits her teeth. Ever since playing alleged knight to the Hufflepuff, Draco has been acting weepy and, under her jealous eye, like a love-ridden fool. At first, this made her spend a lot of time alternately lambasting Draco's features with Adria Market — "he's so _ferret-y_ and he's got this, this, pointy _chin _and sometimes I'm afraid that it might take out my eye when I'm kissing him_" _— and then bawling on her flowered bedsheets and swiping at her nose with a cleaning charm. She even led her own interrogation of the Hufflepuffs last Tuesday, intending to pinch out any torches of illicit love, but none of the ladies could remember the fearless leader of the Slytherins ever stooping to help them, be it with books or anything else.

So it looked like Draco's distance came from something else. After a large amount of time perusing books of the medical persuasion and spending days in the library spattered with invisible ink, she took off her plastic spy glasses, pursed her lips, and concluded the inevitable: he was _gay_. Flaming gay. Starting with a name like _Draco_ and then finishing the job by sending him those weekly installments of the best hair products the wizarding world had to offer, his parents might as well have lit him rainbow from birth. Red, orange, yellow, green, and yes, indigo. The sky is indigo, and Pansy is red with a secret exhilaration: that Draco's distance is not her doing.

Pansy exhales. She'll make the rounds again in the Hufflepuff quarters. It's her duty. But this time, the interrogation will begin with a boy. She glances at Draco sideways — his form has not yet moved from the mashed potatoes. Almost kindly, she reaches over and brushes his hair back.


	3. Idiophone: Part III

**IDIOPHONE, PART I**

By BUNNIEXTRAMSG

It's Potter, he thinks feverishly, that's it, that's the second thing that's been bothering him. Potter's the answer. It's been two months, or three, and Draco still hasn't caught an eye or hair of the dodgy bastard. It didn't bother him at first; au contraire, he smirked a lot, and haunted the hospital ward, waiting to make fun when Potter stumbled out with his body broken, no doubt after another of his rule-breaking adventures; but Madame Pompfrey waved him away too many times, and he eventually found himself replacing his looking for the violinists with looking for the unruly brown mop. Both were elusive and he would turn in class, feeling something itch out of the corner of his vision.

The bottle-glassed git had been absent from all of his classes and none of the professor batted an eye nor said anything to the class, as if everything was fine, as if the insidious castoffs of music wasn't slowly poisoning Draco, as if there wasn't this empty seat with Potter's shadow on it. And then, yesterday, he had caught Weasley's sleeve before class, and with his best sneer, said, "So where's your Potter, weasel? Ditched you and the Mudblood, has he? Not to mention, all his bloody classes?"

Oh, the weasel had shaken his hand off rudely and told him to leave him be unless he wanted a wand stuck up a very uncomfortable place, but after he made for his seat next to Hermione (and the empty space), all Malfoy could think about was how blank Weasley looked when he talked about Potter. Attention had been hard to pay that day.

He shivers. From the cold, of course, he tells himself. The hall after hours is cold, so he speeds his pacing. He should've brought out a wrapper, but he couldn't wait a moment to get out of the room, away from everyone acting like nothing was the matter. Crabbe and Goyle have been getting on his nerves with their loud snuffling and prancing around the room — alright, so they always have, lumbering around like blasted fools, but that was the dependable thing, wasn't it, the thing he could count on, not like this fucking. Stupid. Noise.

Potter must've put a spell on him, that's what. He must've gotten a vacation from defeating Voldemort and decided to have a little fun, after all, with spells, and now he was dodging his sights, because he _knew_ Malfoy would figure it out and come after him, and to think, to _think, _he had had the nerve that last day to help pick up his books as if he was _innocent_. Merlin, he wouldn't be surprised if Potter had done something to the teachers as well—

He slams his fist against the wall. So he couldn't get away from it even if he tried, these damn violins. When has he ever asked for a bloody soundtrack? Okay, so maybe he did once, but that was in jest; that was murmured when half-soaked with his father's whiskey, knees banging against Ada's in the closet as he whispered what he thought were sultry things in her ear. And if he wanted a soundtrack, he'd want cool trumpets and jazzy marvel, not this pansy violin crap.

He slams his fist again, but lower, against the face of a portrait this time. He wants to be screamed at. He wants the paint to leap out of its gilded glass and beat him till he can't think. The lady with the bonnet delivers a weak sound of protest and waves a frilly umbrella at him.

"Shut up you bloody stain," he says, turning away and making for a random stairwell. The chorus ends, and a violin solo begins.

He hears the portrait gasp behind him as his feet clatter down the steps, one two three, pizzicato beat as he misses one and catches himself just barely. "Stain! My ruffles alone consist of 10,000 strokes of oil. I'll have you know that Porticelli himself would've died to..."


End file.
